That Tanney Girl- A Plea for Help and a Shout of Laughter

Hello, Friends and Family. This post is dedicated to a girl who has a Teaching Predicament. Her name is Tanney. Well, that's not her actual name, but it's the name that I use. That means that when I get on Facebook and I try to type in her name, she doesn't pop up.

That's right. Her name is Tayler. She's a very nice person, but she's not having a very nice time at work right now. She's a Junior High teacher. Some of her students are having issues. (And this is just ONE of the situations: read about her Bad Day here.)

Seriously, though, someone should tell that kid the real story of Pride and Prejudice. Mr. Darcy wasn't a total git in character, had gentlemanly breeding, and was chastised by the woman he declared his love to- and then he loved her enough to change. Not everyone needs to be a Bingley, but for goodness' sake, don't be a WICKHAM!

Poor Tanney was trying to review for the test, and these goobly gooks decided that it would be fun to not let anyone review, and to be insufferably rude to the teacher. They have often interrupted the class, and are ridiculously out of control sometimes. It has gone on for a good while now. Nothing will stop them. Not speaking with vice principles, not in-school detentions, or any other kind of disciplinary action that's been attempted.  Poor Tanney. She doesn't know what to do. Are any of you people teachers? Do you have any suggestions? For more details of the situation, take a look at her blog (link in next paragraph).

I decided that Tanney needed a pick-me-up after this last post of hers about her frustrating day at school (and yes, that's an actual link, not just fancy lettering). So I'm writing this post as a plea for help (see above), and a cry for joyous happiness (see below).

Tanney is a MARVELOUS PERSON. She is a FANTASTIC FRIEND. She is an ENTHUSIASTIC TEACHER. She is also a person of SPECTACULARLY REFINED TASTES!

Notice anything that wasn't there before?

We complement each other so well in our literary tastes!

When I do something like what's on the left, she comes in with what's on the right! Though, to be fair, we have been in the reverse roles as well. We're a good balance.

We will someday both have read every book in existence (worth reading), and both be published and  find our books in a fantastic library somewhere.

That's right! Tanney LOVES Beauty and the Beast, Jane Austen, books and writing, and history. Does she sound familiar? If you answered with "GOLLY! She sounds a lot like Tashya!," you'd be absolutely correct! I told you she was refined!

I really hope that things work out for Tanney and those Trouble Kids of hers. If anyone has a suggestion, I'd love to hear it and pass it on to her. Or you could put it in a comment on her blog post.

Tanney, you are one of my best friends. I love you. You are a magnificent person. Your love for teaching and your love for your students are inspiring. Don't let this take any of the sparkle out of your life. Know that there are plenty of students that do love you, and that you have friends who can't give you hugs in person, but can draw funny pictures of you to try to cheer you up. Have Justin give you lots of hug from me. Keep smiling, keep loving, and keep making the world a better place.

If you get desperate, go read the last PICTORIAL post again. I'll even suggest you pray for a laugh- and happily be embarrassed on your behalf.

Man Voice and the Water Heater

After waiting for ten minutes for the shower to warm up, Lia realized that something must be wrong with the water heater. Dread shot through her. A broken water heater at the end of October? She was going to die. But she really did need that shower. She was less than fresh, and adding more deodorant just wouldn’t cut it. 

With an incredibly powerful shiver, Lia slipped out of her towel and into the shower. She gave a strangled gasp. It was freezing! For a girl who enjoyed warm showers and never ended a shower before fifteen minutes, it was a miracle beyond words how quickly she managed to wash. For a girl who despised being cold, it was miracle she hadn’t died before she got out. Of course, it could have had something to do with the fact that she hardly bothered to get all of the conditioner out of her hair, or to make sure that the suds were rinsed out of her armpits. 

Lia pulled her towel around her, teeth chattering hard enough to make her sound like one of those wind up mouth toys. Of course none of the other girls had to deal with a freezing shower. No, they all showered earlier because they were getting ready for the apartment Halloween party tonight! They had been able to take humane showers, while Lia had almost DIED.

After she was dressed, Lia opened her bedroom door so that she could hear the people downstairs while she was toweling off her hair. The other girls were getting picked up by their dates. Who had even come up with this party idea anyway? All of the guys going had been assigned a girl’s name that he was to escort to the party. That idea right there excluded Lia because she was dating someone in a different apartment complex. Oh well. She could just spend the rest of the evening catching up on all of that homework. 

“What? Something’s wrong with your water heater?”

Lia perked up. That was a man voice she didn’t recognize. That didn’t exactly mean anything since she was non-interesting due to her status as non-available. Lia didn’t really talk to a lot of boys in her apartment complex. She tuned back into the conversation downstairs. It was about making the freezing water not freezing.

“…what Lia says, anyway,” Ally was saying. Lia sniffed. It is broken!, she thought.

“Well, have you checked the pilot light?” asked the same man voice.

“The what?” Only one girl said it, but Lia was pretty sure that they were both thinking it.

“Will you let me check it?”

“Be my guest.”

Lia held her breath as she heard someone open the closet with the furnace and water heater. 

“Your pilot light is off, that’s all. It’s not broken.” A click. “There. All fixed.”

Lia was in serious danger.

“You mean that we’ll have warm water again?” asked Ally.

“Yes,” said that wonderfully angelic man voice.

And that was it. It was sealed. Lia was in love with Man Voice. Too bad she didn’t know who he was.



NOTE: This is a bit of writing that I've been working on. It's an adaptation of how the Engineer met the Princess. And remember what they say: Fact really is stranger than fiction.

Next Installment: Plotting a Quest

Megan and Tashya- Sisters in Embarrassment

Let me tell you how my prayer embarrassed Megan.

Megan is my older sister. I'm taller than her by maybe about 1/4th of an inch. Regardless, she is my big sister, and I'm rather fond of her. She is blonde, blue-eyed, and beautiful. Megan is a Vocal Education major in her last semester, and she has a lovely voice. Her calling in church is the Stake Music Person. She was also the answer to my prayer on Saturday.

Megan was asked a while ago to prepare a musical number for a Relief Society activity to be held Saturday morning. Megan, being very busy, forgot about until Friday afternoon. She called everyone she could think of to sing the song, but no one was available. Discovering that her own voice was the only option, Megan found a girl to play piano for her.

Megan has a knack for picking up music, sort of looking at it, and then being able to play it on the piano, improv a better accompaniment, and sing along with it all without a hitch. (Jealous? I am.) She wasn't too worried.

But then the next morning when it was time for the two to perform during the activity...

That's right. Whoever had gone into the room to set up for the activity had forgotten one eensy-weensy teeny-weeny ever so crucial detail- the particular song the organizers had REQUESTED required a PIANO. And there wasn't one in the room. So Megan and Lolita (whatever her real name is) had to run around and try to find a piano real quick.

(NOTE: Ignore my awful grammar in that picture. I promise that not all of my English education is wasted all the time. Just some of the time. Like when I'm drawing pictorials and I can't edit it afterwards without expending a great amount of effort. If you know how to fix things like that, let me know. We'll be friends.)

So when they finally got the piano in there, they composed themselves, and prepared to perform the special musical number. They began the song, but it turns out the microphone was on the fritz and that most people couldn't hear Megan singing (which generally isn't a problem even without a microphone). They asked Megan and Lolita to start AGAIN.

And so Megan starts the song again, practically eating the microphone. But she notices something. Her music is out of order. All of the running around dragging in pianos had somehow discombobulated her sheet music. And she didn't even know the song. Not even the chorus. Megan just started making things up and singing whatever part was in front of her. Poor Lolita just tried to follow her around on the meandering journey through Wonderland.

Poor Lolita. Maybe she would've been able to follow better if everyone would stop calling her Lolita to get her attention. How is she supposed to know where to go if no one will say her name?

After this whole fiasco, Megan gave me a call to share the woeful and hilarious tale of unfortunate incidents with me. I laughed. A lot. Megan asked, "WHY DO THESE THINGS HAPPEN TO ME?!" I was about to respond with a "Because you're Megan and you're special enough" kind of speech, but I stopped to think about it. And then I realized something. 

It was my fault. I've been having a hard time with some things lately, and I wanted a good laugh. So I prayed that I would find happy things, and funny things, and things to laugh over with people that I love. And then I get a call from Megan, one of the people I love most, detailing quite the musical fiasco, and we laughed together.

Well, there you go. Now you know that prayers really are answered. And the next time that something awfully ridiculous is happening to you, think about who might be praying for a reason to smile, and go and find them. Share your experience. Laugh. And then tell them to pray for something else.

Let me tell you how I embarrassed myself.

Yesterday at church, I saw a lady I've talked to a few times. Her name is Susan. She's a very nice lady. She has a son (she has several sons, in fact) who recently had a bad accident. Something about his ankle, and ligaments and/or tendons (are those separate things?) being torn. They knew that there was a pretty good chance of his needing orthopedic surgery, and that didn't make things any better. He also has a hard time getting around. That doesn't make situations pleasant for the patient or for the people trying to be patient with the patient. (This is not to say that he isn't an excellent patient- you'd have to ask his mother.) Cookies are always appreciated, no? I offered cookies, and cookies were accepted. That meant that I needed to go home and make some.

However, I hadn't planned on feeding the missionaries at 5:00. We found out at about 3:00ish, and church got out at 4:00. We got out to the car pretty quickly so we could could get some food started in the kitchen. I was rather frazzled by the whole affair, so I was glad to be able to bake afterwards. I whipped up some good old chocolate chip cookies. Such a pleasant little morsel of happiness. Cookie purity. I was feeling relaxed...

Until I realized that I didn't have any plates I could use to bring the cookies over to The Patient. Just a bunch of cheap plastic wrap that doesn't work. It doesn't stick together until you don't want it to. It puckers and gapes and lets goodness slip out of its confines. Except when it has me in its clutches. 

Not wanting to lose cookies or endanger myself, I decided that using a brown lunch bag would work. After much confusion as to the proper method for stacking cookies in a brown lunch bag, we managed to get things packaged. I included a quote (that I made up on the spot) on the front of the bag:

Hey, if they don't fix your body, at least they can bring a grand old smile to your face and bring back happiness and cheer and memories of happy times in childhood years of yore. 

We took the Bag of Happiness over to the correct house, and walked up to the door. We knocked, and listened to a giant dog make loud barking noises until the door was opened by The Patient's father. 

That's right. I mumbled. I made a strange face. I started to become very uncertain about being at the right house, especially when he asked again,

Andrew jumped in and covered up my muttering. It was then that I realized that I had arbitrarily assigned The Patient the name of Brett. I have no real idea where that name came from. I'm sure that there is a very nice man named Brett that I met recently who is walking around, blissfully unaware of the grief and embarrassment he caused me Sunday evening. 

Seeing the comment about the healing properties of cookies caused a realization for one, amusement for another, and chagrin for the third.

Yes. Garrett. But in my heart of hearts, The Patient will always be fondly referred to as Brett. I hope that he enjoyed those cookies. I hope that he enjoyed the fact that someone who didn't even know his real name would make him cookies and package them in a brown bag bearing a fictitious proverb JUST to make him feel a little bit better. 

And I really hope that this doesn't mean that Megan has been praying for a laugh. Because I don't know how much more of this I can take.

Not a Good Day for Flowers

PLEASE NOTE: This was written several weeks ago, and for some reason entirely unknown to myself, Bob Saget, Andrew's trombone, or even my teddy bear Francis, it didn't get posted to the blog. So, here you go. Have a nice read on this while I draw pictures about Thanksgiving. END NOTE.

Did you know that I have a china set? I do. It's pretty. It's an off white shade, with beautiful silver and white flowers and designs on it. It even has silver on the edges. It's actually very beautiful. I'm very proud of it. However, all of the pieces are very dusty and dirty. I've just pulled them out of the box where they've been hiding for a good long while because I now have an elegant hutch to put them in. So am I going to wash them?

No.

Now, you may be wondering why, if it is indeed true that I'm proud of my fine china set and wish to display it, WHY would I not clean this collection of teacups and dinner plates and gravy boats and those ones that I'm not even sure what purpose they have? Because apparently is the day to kill off flowers.

I have a favorite set of mugs. Each one has a different type and color of flower drawn on it all cutesy like to make a mismatching matching set of four. There used to be four. Two were killed off in the battleground of college living. Today for lunch, I went for my favorite- peanut butter and jelly sandwich with milk. The ONLY correct way to eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich is with milk. Any other notion or way of consuming this type of sandwich is blasphemy. End of story. Anyway, I decided to use one of my favorites, the blue and green flowered one. I reached up on my tippy-toes to get it off of the high shelf... and then watched it land on the floor by my feet.

That's right. I broke my favorite blue and green flowered mug. After staring at it for a while, I noticed that my arm was kind of sore. It turns out that I whacked it during my failed mad dash to save my beloved mug. I mourned my mug. Even using my favorite pink and orange flowered mug didn't make me feel better. Not even my favorite lunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwich with milk didn't make me feel better.

I got up after lunch and started doing the dishes. I wanted to clear out all of the other dishes before I brought in my china set. I didn't want any accidents because there were too many dishes in the sink. It was a good idea, I though. Besides, cleaning the dishes is a good thing to do if you don't want a stinky kitchen. But my good idea decided to rub itself in my face. As I was washing one of my green and pink flowered bowls I got for our wedding, it JUMPED out of my hand and split into two pieces and a sliver right there in the sink. I stared at that for a while, too. I picked up the pieces and tried to put them together- it looked like it would be a clean gluing job. I put a cloth down on the counter so I could put the wet pieces down gently. But then the stubborn buffoon piece of crockery decided to jump out of my hand AGAIN, and the two pieces became three.

That was when I decided to give up on glass things for the day. And things with flowers. That china set is just going to stay dirty until Andrew has time to supervise me while I'm working with it. Instead I sat down, ate some starbursts, and drew some pictures for this blog. And then I decided to write this story for you as well. So here you go.

No more flowers or glass. And especially no more glass flowers. At least for today.